by Paul Almond
She turned to me. “Don’t say that, don’t ever say that, Eric.” She looked frightened. “I don’t want you to get killed. What would I do?”
“Well, you’d still have your family, Raine.”
She gave an exclamation of disgust. “You can’t use that word for the folks I live with.”
I felt really sad for her. We climbed up a bit and then through some of the thickest bushes you could imagine. And then, right where the trees began again, we broke into her little clearing, about six foot across. Around the edge she had planted some wild flowers that I was sure would soon die, with not enough sun. And through the branches of the bushes, she had threaded vines. Very private, and very nice. She sat down. “I picked this place because it’s got the softest moss.”
She lay back and looked up at the stars.
After a few seconds, I heard her sigh. I wasn’t looking at her. “I sure would like to see you off tomorrow,” she said.
What a good idea. But then, I realized, it would upset me. And not only me, the family — if they were coming to see me off. It would probably just be Old Poppa — would he like to share me with Raine? And then I had this thought: “You know what? I’ll have Old Poppa drive me down to Port Daniel to take the train, instead of from St. Godfrey. And you come by the Iron Bridge. You can stand there on your side of the Hollow close to the tracks and when the train comes, I’ll be at the window. And we’ll wave to each other.”
After a moment, she said, “I like that idea.”
I sat listening to the owl for a few moments.
“This moss is sure soft,” she murmured.
I wondered if that was an invitation? Or just a statement. And then I became aware of her as a girl. Her and me. Together in this forest bower. What was supposed to happen? I sure wasn’t gonna fall on her like the other lads do with their girls. First of all, I was far too shy. And second, I respected her too much.
Anyway, it was real nice, us sitting like this, shafts of moonlight coming down through the bushes, and an owl calling.
I felt a tug at my arm. She put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me down. I lay beside her. Then she nudged closer, and I found my arm going around her. We lay like that for a while.
“Pretty nice place you got here,” I said at last.
“I made it just for us,” she repeated.
I nodded.
“And now,” she said, “I’m going to make sure you won’t ever forget me.”
She leaned over and kissed me, and then her kisses moved across my cheek and then she pressed her mouth against my own lips. I couldn’t stop myself, my arms went round her and I started kissing her, too.
And then her little hands went down to my trousers. She began undoing them and taking them off. It kind of shocked me. Had she done this before? Surely not. But how...
She kept undressing me. It was a warm night, so that was fine. Until she started taking off her own dress.
“Raine,” I whispered, “do you know what you’re doing?”
“Yes.” Nearly naked, she lay beside me. Then she turned her lips to my ear, and she whispered. “I won’t if you don’t want to.”
I knew I did. I loved her so much. But I wanted to understand more about what was going on.
She guessed at my thoughts. “I suppose you want to know how come I know all this?”
“You don’t do it with other boys, I know that for sure.”
“Of course not.” All this was being said very, very quietly, although there was no one to hear us for a long way.
“With you going so far away, I decided to tell you all my secrets. My worst secrets. Shut your eyes.” I did. “I’m going to tell you, because I know that if you hear them, you may hate me, but maybe not. Anyway, you’ll know everything about me. And there’ll be no lies of any kind between us. Only truth.”
My heart welled up with feelings for her. “No matter what you tell me, Raine, I’ll still always love you.”
I couldn’t believe the words had come out of my mouth. Imagine me saying that! But when I thought about it, I really meant it. I did love her. So much.
We lay for a long time in silence while I waited for her to tell me these secrets. Finally, she began to whisper. “It was my uncle François first. He made me. I fought hard. But it was no use. He threatened to drown me in the brook if I didn’t let him. Even though he’s old and had a bad leg, I knew he could. And that no one would ever find out. They’d just see this drowned body. It scared the life out of me. I knew I better not resist or I’d end up in that millpond.”
I stayed silent. What story was this I was trying to absorb? It sounded true. My mind went numb. I kept on holding her tight, while she gathered up courage to keep on.
“Over and over again, he’d take me off alone. Every week. Since I was about twelve. And then he made me do it with his other brother. “Poor Blind Pierre,” he would say, “he needs it so bad.” So I had to do it with him.
“They both saw to it that I got treats — that’s the worst of it. Maybe that’s what kept me alive and goin’. They wanted me healthy, so they could enjoy themselves.”
Finally, it seemed she had finished. I tried my best to absorb it. Did I ever feel for her, poor little girl. Then I started to get angry. So angry, I thought I’d go out right that minute and — “I’m gonna get my .32 and come back and shoot them both.” Anger choked my voice.
She rolled onto me and grabbed me tight. “No no no, don’t do that. They’ll catch you, and put you away, and hang you for murder. No no no. Anyway, Eric, they’ve stopped. I swear it. Last year, they stopped. I promise, Eric, they don’t do it no more. One of Blind Pierre’s daughters, she’s thirteen now, I’ve seen them giving her treats. Maybe they got her to do it. So you don’t need to worry.”
“I don’t need to worry? What you mean!” I got up on one elbow. “Of course I worry. I worry about her.”
“You don’t even know her. And she...” she grasped for words, “what she told me, she likes it, kind of. She likes the treats. They don’t hurt her, she said. Just leave them be. I’m gonna get out of here just as quick as I can. Just as soon as I get more figures into my head, I’m gonna run away and work at some store in New Carlisle, maybe even further away, like Bonaventure, where they won’t find me. Don’t you worry.”
She calmed down a little as she felt me relax. I could see that any wild action on my part might lead to repercussions she didn’t need, on top of everything else.
“Eric, now that I’ve told you, you know everything. But maybe... you don’t want me any more?”
I didn’t reply right away. I needed time to think. And then, I heard a sound. I turned. She was biting her hand so hard. But it didn’t help. She just curled over and cried.
Of course, my heart broke. I couldn’t bear the sound of her tiny sobs. I started to kiss her, and to reassure her. I kissed her on the cheeks, and shut her eyes with kisses, and then I found her lips, and I touched them with my own, just softly, and then more and more, and she really responded. I don’t know how it all happened, but we were lying together naked, so finally everything built into a kind of wild rushing bonfire, the two of us locked together onto that bed of soft moss in our hidden bower. Like nothing I had ever experienced. And she told me later, neither had she.
Not once, but again. And again. For her, she said, it was a way of sealing our love. And seal it, it sure did.
***
Old Poppa and I drove down to Port Daniel station in silence. Both our hearts were heavy. All we talked about was Poppa coming to meet me at Christmas in New Carlisle, and how I would try to write often.
At the station, four or five other families were saying goodbye, mostly young men, all of them going off to enlist. Lots of tears, let me tell you. I wanted to go with them, and I almost felt like a coward. But I had a new love, Raine, and it would be a long time before I’d forget what happened in that wooded bower with the owl calling.
Well sir, soon I found myself sitting in the w
indow of the train that had only stopped for a couple of minutes to let us on. The whistle blew and so began the mournful journey out of Port Daniel, not only past the Iron Bridge but on to Montreal, where I would transfer to another train for Sherbrooke and then get admitted to Bishop’s University.
Thoughts spun through my head as I watched the fields go by. My new life had begun. But Shigawake was still so big inside me, and along with my home, that scared little girl to whom I had given all the love I had.
Before too long, I sat up, because I heard the train blowing for Kruse’s crossing. I leaned against the window, and there she was. She had on one of the dresses Old Momma had given her in the spring. All white. Just like a bride. I could see her begin to wave in the distance. Then as the train swept past, much too fast, I was waving frantically and so was she. And trying hard not to cry. Well, maybe she succeeded, I don’t know, but for myself, down came the tears. Goodbye Shigawake. Goodbye Raine.
Part Two
Flanders
Chapter Six
July 26, 1916
We arrived at the firing line after midnight. I quickly dismounted and stood ready with my flashlight to direct our lads to our gun-pit . At last, nine months of training was over — I had reached Zillebeke near Ypres, and the real Front. And I’d been made a Corporal.
Sergeant McKillop had already done his reconnoitring. He came over for a hurried consultation, for I was his “Coverer”, taking over for him. His hacking cough wasn’t getting any better. “Sergeant,” I said, “you’ve got to look after that flu. You leave with the horses, and we’ll get things going.”
“Corp, it’s your first time at the Front —”
“Don’t worry, let’s get you in shape first. I’ll be fine.” But to tell the truth, I felt anything but secure. I guess they wouldn’t have made me a Corporal if they hadn’t figured I could do it, but right now, I felt as if nothing had sunk in.
“All right,” he said, “you bring our gun into action, and I’ll walk out to the first marker to help you spot it.” Quinn McKillop was a fine fellow, though perhaps a bit salty, from down Prince Edward Island way. He’d served in another Battery at the Front so we all respected him. Damn shame he’d come down sick for this first deployment of the 35th. But he’d soon be back.
Two Gunners leapt off the limber and separated it from the gun. “Drive on,” I ordered and the Drivers headed our six-horse hitch out of harm’s way back to the Wagon Lines. The other three howitzers set off for their own gun-pits, and our second six-horse hitch pulled up to drop its ammunition cart. Its Gunners leapt off and we set about unhooking the cart and manhandling the gun onto its platform as quickly as possible — but we were hardly experts. Sure we’d practised it at Witley and on Salisbury Plane, but what a difference on this churned-up earth in the pitch dark, with Fritz’s artillery aiming right at us.
My heavens, getting that howitzer, one and a half tons of metal, turned and backed down into the pit — if the rest of the army was like this, how could we ever win? We were all pretty nervous: our firing lines are normally fifteen hundred yards behind the trenches, so well within range of the Heinie’s seventy-seven millimetres. Any minute, one of those flashes on the horizon could be a round coming to blow us to smithereens.
Seeing some sandbags left by the previous detachment, I detailed our Gunners to pile them around the entrance to our gun-pit.
Edward, our Bombardier, murmured, “Corp, don’t you think we should unload the ammunition first?” He was the sort of soldier you could always count on; we’d become buddies even though our backgrounds were so different. He hailed from an exclusive part of Montreal called Westmount, and it was rumoured he lived in a great house on top of the mountain. Already, he’d been getting parcels of food from his family that he always generously shared.
“Of course!” Damn. I’d better start shaping up or I’d lose all respect. Oh well, weren’t we all new? No one really minded or even noticed as we set about unloading the thirty-five pound shells and brass cartridges.
The only one who didn’t help was Harry Oakes. He wasn’t very strong, and moreover, he hated this whole dreadful expedition. During our days at the rest camp by Le Havre, he had confided his fears. Quarrelsome little bugger, though, for all his timidity. Got on my nerves, no doubt. Slight, blonde — almost albino — he obviously just made the height and weight limits for enlisting, and they must have waved the chest requirement. Like me, he was the youngest of a large family and only joined up to get a square meal. Well, I sent him first to find the latrines and then see about our sleeping quarters. If none, we’d sleep in the gun-pit.
Our pit had been roofed over with corrugated iron and earth piled on top, all held up by stout timbers. A shelf had been dug into the side wall for storing ammunition, so I set the Gunners to stack it. Next I checked to make sure the gun’s sights were directly over the marker placed earlier by the Jumbo, the recce officer. And no, by George, we were six inches off.
Now what? Make a fool of myself again?
“Sorry, boys,” I called. “The sights aren’t directly over the marker.” Muttered grumbling met this announcement, for the boys were as tired as I was: we all wanted to bed down as soon as possible. Also, an unspoken competition existed between us and the other Howitzers to get ours ready the quickest. The four guns had been laid out in a regulation line, twenty paces between. Other Batteries of lighter 18-pounders were positioning closer to the front line, their barrel diameters being three inches as opposed to ours at four and a half inches, which gave ours the name: a 4.5 howitzer.
Well, I ordered “run up” to move the gun forward and “trails left or right” until we hit the mark, and the boys reapplied the brakes. Behind the sights, I looked for the Sergeant. I caught the faint luminous paint on our front aiming post next to his muffled flashlight. Beyond, I saw another fainter gleam on the rear aiming post. Good — we were dead on the zero line.
What now? Oh yes, camouflage our limber. Behind the gun-pit I found a protective covering with a camouflage flap. We hurriedly secured the empty cart under the lean-to. By then the Sarge had returned, and after making sure I felt all right, he set off for the wagon lines with my horse Barry in tow.
Harry Oakes reported where the latrines lay and said the dugout was horrible. “Was it clean?” I asked, and he replied, “Oh yes, clean enough.” Nasty piece of work, actually, our Harry. A city boy from the Point (Point St. Charles), he had never slept in the open: his home was probably a crowded shanty down by the Lachine Canal.
So now, two thirty in the morning and damn tired, we headed for our dugout. Whizbangs from those seventy-seven millimetre quick-firing guns kept striking near by; sure made me nervous. But I fell onto the first pallet by the doorway of the dugout. Then instead of dropping off to sleep at once, I lay fearing what might happen once we really engaged the enemy.
***
For some reason, I woke before the cook called, “Breakfast up!” I came out of the dugout to find Edward Whitehead already waiting, having a smoke. I joined him and looked around. The Belgian countryside seemed so peaceful. Our Battery had been placed behind a wood, now mostly destroyed. The skeletons of trees, shorn of leaves by bombardments, pointed their scrawny arms at the sky as if begging for new raiment. When would that come? The war was supposed to have been over in a year. But right now, it seemed as if it would go on forever.
Edward took the pipe out of his mouth, wiped his lips, and murmured, “I wonder if I’ll ever see Katie again.”
“Who knows. We’re in it now, for sure.” I had also taken up the pipe during my time in the army. Everyone smoked at the Front; not affordable on the Gaspe Coast. I stuffed my pipe bowl. “You know Edward, I can’t get the sight of that awful crossroads out of my mind. Think we’ll end up...”
“Maybe.”
We smoked in silence. Tall, patrician in manner, Edward had a quiet dignity that usually betokened an officer. He came from a good family but had joined up right out of school. His broth
er had been in university and so had joined the Officer Corps.
He had often confided his love for his beautiful Katie. So far, I’d kept my mouth shut about Raine. She was about as far as anyone could be from Edward’s Katie, who was tall, stylish and stunning, he told me, in those high-waisted long gowns with her dainty little shoes and cunning hats. Raine just had one old cotton frock and bare feet, lovely smooth brown arms, tousled hair. Quite a difference.
We sat for a few moments in silence, and I wondered why Raine had not been more in my thoughts. Driven out, surely, by the incessant drilling in that camp near Sherbrooke, learning how to handle rifles, salute and march and all those instructions on gunnery. So many new faces, too — more than I’d ever met. And then off across the Atlantic. Such a big boat! Getting seasick, just like old Poppa did on the bay. Then arriving in England.
Some of Shigawake did linger: Raine clung to my heart like a shellfish gripping a rock. But then, landing in the Old Country — the home of my own sailor grandfather a century ago — and then training in Witley... where we finally got to fire a proper howitzer. No modern guns in Canada, only old 12 pounders we’d practise hauling with six-horse teams. But in England when I first went to the “Gun Park” expecting a lake, a few birds, maybe an old Boer War cannon like outside barracks in Montreal, I gaped at a line of new guns stretching as far as the eye could see.
I was actually glad those enlisting officers had gotten hold of me. Likely I’d make a better job of my university education when I got back. And this way I met all kinds of fellas: lawyers, bankers, some from farms, though not that many. Recruits came mostly from towns: builders, carpenters and painters, many out of work. Another surprising thing: not too many French fellas. Being as how we trained in Quebec province, you’d think we’d have been flooded. But the French-Canadians were pretty well against this war. The way I heard it, France had done so little for them over the last while, they didn’t feel any great compassion to go fight for it. Also, General Hughes insisted on integrating them into English regiments even if they couldn’t speak it. And the English? Well, French fellas used to complain we only employed them as maids and woodsmen, and true, I never met a lot behind wickets in banks. So if they didn’t want to fight a French war, why the hell would they want to join the British? There was a terrific French Canadian battalion though, the Van Doos, with a great reputation.